Our country has always been disgustingly abundant with fame-seeking wannabes, especially since reality television swallowed our brains whole. Small-town sweethearts discover peroxide and the push-up bra and believe they are magically transformed into the next big thing.

I sometimes like to dream that I’m on ‘Glee.’ I’m all for being a little delusional. And if you possess the genes to rock the Barbie look, then good for you. But when these stooges end up resorting to drugs, clubbing or worse — homemade music videos — to tally their 15 minutes, it just gets obnoxious.

Which leads me to Hollywood’s latest media buzz: Courtney Stodden.

The 17-year-old aspiring actress, singer and (somewhat less laughable) model recently married 51-year-old actor Doug Hutchinson — most known as the heartless security guard in ‘The Green Mile.’

So while most girls are planning a milestone birthday at this special age, Stodden had her sights set on a more mature milestone: her wedding. (Marriage is legal in Nevada with parent consent, so don’t worry, Hutchinson isn’t committing statutory rape.)

The media has obviously attacked both Stodden and Hutchinson for reasons not even worth mentioning (gross, weird, creepy, unorthodox, fame-seeking wannabes). I digress.

With questions of plastic surgery and even her actual age (birthers, where you at?) aside, the girl’s only trying to get her name up in lights. And she did it in the most classic way possible.

She utilized her, er, unique relationship to make a name for herself, quite a commitment. Sure, plenty of celebrities have exposed their nuptials for the likes of reality television or paparazzi. But they do so only after they had already established their names with sex tapes or cocaine addictions or plastic surgery obsessions.

Stodden surpassed all the hoopla and went right for the alter.

Think their love is a sham? YouTube any one of their countless interviews. Hutchinson delivered this heartwarming quote during one of the couple’s more notorious appearances on ‘The Morning Show’ in Australia.

‘Embrace love fearlessly because we don’t know whether we’re going to be here tomorrow, so we’re diving in today. 51+16=love, in our world,’ he says. (Stodden was 16 at the time of the quote.)

‘Sexy love!’ giggled Stodden.

So adorable. Just a couple of crazy kids in love (well, not exactly). Who cares that her eyes kind of roll around in her head during interviews. Or that she does a weird pursing thing with her lips, which unburies the question of whether or not she’s on drugs or at the very least highly medicated. Or that, you know, he’s 34 years her senior. Love knoweth no boundaries … or whatever.

She promises she was a virgin until the wedding night, so that’s all cute and Christian. He swears she changed his life and rehabilitated his soul, which was nice of her. She got her 15 minutes without clubbing or drugs, plastic surgery (maybe), but we’ll let that one slide. Had she been in high school still, who knows what kind of mischief and/or STDs she’d be getting into.

I’m sure the reality show announcement is on its way, in which case we can focus on judging her by the strength of her, eh, character, rather than the age of her husband.

Lauren Tousignant is a senior communication and rhetorical studies and writing major. Her column appears every Thursday. She can be reached at letousig@syr.edu.

Published on September 13, 2011 at 12:00 pm